Ordering Your Private World, Week Two

For the second week, I'm just posting the notes I prepared for class on OYPW. Feel free to join in with your thoughts.

Chapter 1: The Sinkhole Syndrome

Our private world is a source of strength and stability, especially under pressure. If neglected, it will not have the strength to hold everything else up. Yet we can come to realize that we have spent “the majority of [our] time and energy establishing life on the visible level, at the surface.” (p. 14)

“Our public worlds are filled with a seeming infinity of demands upon our time, our loyalties, our money, and our energies. And because these public worlds of ours are so visible, so real, we have to struggle to ignore all their seductions and demands. They scream for our attention and action. The result is that our private world is often cheated, neglected because it does not shout quite so loudly. It can be effectively ignored for long periods of time before it gives way to a sinkhole-like cave-in.” (p. 15)

“One of the great battlegrounds of our age is the private world of the individual. There is a contest that must be fought particularly by those who call themselves practicing Christians. Among them are those who work hard, shouldering massive responsibilities at home, at work, and at church. They are good people, but they are very, very tired! …We are naively inclined to believe that the most publicly active person is also the most privately spiritual… Because we tend to think like this, there is the temptation to give imbalanced attention to our public worlds at the expense of the private.” (p. 15-16)

Ephesians 3:14-21 (NLT)
When I think of the wisdom and scope of God's plan, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, [15] the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth. [16] I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will give you mighty inner strength through his Holy Spirit. [17] And I pray that Christ will be more and more at home in your hearts as you trust in him. May your roots go down deep into the soil of God's marvelous love. [18] And may you have the power to understand, as all God's people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love really is. [19] May you experience the love of Christ, though it is so great you will never fully understand it. Then you will be filled with the fullness of life and power that comes from God.
[20] Now glory be to God! By his mighty power at work within us, he is able to accomplish infinitely more than we would ever dare to ask or hope. [21] May he be given glory in the church and in Christ Jesus forever and ever through endless ages. Amen.

Chapter 2: The View From the Bridge

Proverbs 4:23 (NASB)
Watch over your heart with all diligence, For from it flow the springs of life.

“What I call the ‘bridge,’ he [Solomon] calls the ‘heart.’ He sees the heart as a spring, and out of it can flow the energy, the insight, and the force that do not succumb to outer turbulence, but rather overcome it. …But what does it mean to ‘keep’ the heart? For one thing, the writer is obviously concerned that the heart be protected from influences outside itself that might jeopardize its integrity. …keeping or guarding the heart, the ‘bridge’ of human life, is a deliberate and disciplined choice a man or woman must make.” (p. 23-24)

Romans 12:2 (NASB)
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.